Makings of a Home
by IONCTM
Summary: Two days later and the workshop is the most secure room in the world, and he's not even kidding. And no one, not even Pepper, has access anymore, at any level. SHIELD couldn't even begin hacking or overriding. JARVIS sounded sufficiently satisfied with that piece of information.
1. Not Panicking

**Chapter 1:**

The first time it happened, it was a few weeks after the alien invasion.

Tony figured he should have been more responsive than he was, but really, besides all the damage the city took and Coulson being _fucking ALIVE_ (yeah, whatever little trust he had in Fury was gone), Tony didn't really have anything to be angry about. And he wasn't. That at least should have surprised him, maybe a little, but no.

There was hardly a time he could remember being speechless, but as it was, all he could do was stare. Also to note, Tony Stark did not panic, so this wasn't panicking, but he was frozen where he stood, heart hammering in his chest.

Standing in front of him was Loki.

_Loki_.

Not in Asgard, free, and full of magic Loki.

A blue Loki. A _struggling_ blue Loki.

He was just standing there and Tony wondered what was going to happen next. The part of his mind that was always online, observing, calculating, assessing, noticed that he was clearly not okay and Tony didn't know what to do with that piece of intel.

He made an effort to breathe when his lungs started burning, and it was then that Loki looked at him.

_Red eyes._

Heart rate calming slightly, he got his brain back in enough order to perceive that blue Loki was clutching at his clothes. The leather material was slashed in every place Tony could put his eyes to and it looked like it shouldn't have even been possible for them to still be on his body and not on the floor.

Right. Why he's grasping at the shreds. Literally. _And was that really what his mind chose to focus on right now?_

Tony opened his mouth to…what? Call JARVIS? He was pretty damn sure he wouldn't be given the chance. It didn't even matter as his vocal chords seemed to be on vacation. Loki took the time to grip his clothes tighter and _whimper_.

What?

Tony was so far from a relatively normal situation that he deserved a goddamn medal for handling this with some dignity. Ignoring the blood he could still hear rushing through his head, he was almost serene. Downright peaceful. Or something.

Whatever. He'll fucking take it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but wonder at his bitch of a luck. He didn't recall anyone else picking up a stray piece of metal in their workshop, only to be greeted with the sight of _Loki_, of all people, when they stood up.

_Bruce would have panicked already,_ Tony childishly thought. But Tony Stark was not panicking, not one bit.

A sharp inhale from the god ten feet in front of him broke Tony away from talking to himself, and _Fuck, Stark, do something_.

He shifted, slowly placing the piece of metal on his work table and wiping his palms on the thighs of his jeans. No sudden movements because he was acutely aware that he wasn't in his suit; he was one hundred percent fragile human and in front of him was all Magical God.

Loki didn't seem to be moving, his crazed stare boring into the inventor's, and Tony couldn't even begin to tell what he was thinking. Hopefully something painless.

Hesitantly, _Fuck he never read What To Do When Distressed Evil Villains Appear In Your Workshop,_ "..Loki…"

_Oh words. Remember those things Stark? Use them._ He almost scowled. There was no need for his mind to sass him right now.

When he didn't die, he repeated, more confidently, "Loki." At that the god, _why is he blue_, blinked rapidly, whimpered _again_ and shit, Tony didn't know what to _do_. This was more that slightly awkward, and then he disappeared.

Well, no. Apparently.

All he saw was a disappearing god, but not even a blink later felt arms wrapping around his back, hands grabbing at his t-shirt, a weight on his chest, and what felt like a face in his neck.

Okay, Tony Stark did not panic, but there were always exceptions to rules.

And apparently, when he panicked this much, there was Nothing in his head. His upstairs processors were blank. He harshly let the air out of his body when he felt his lungs burning again. He could feel Loki, _is this really the same Loki that tried to kill them_, moving against him.

A few forceful (fearful?) breaths later and he realized that he was still alive; there was no knife in his side and that no. Not moving. Shivering. And that wasn't right either.

_Trembling_.

Tony looked down. There was a trembling God of Mischief hanging onto him for what looked like dear life. He didn't know what did it, _desperation_, but all of a sudden his brain was kicked into full processing capacity and he could barely focus, all the things flying through his mind, and _shit_.

Shit. Shit. SHIT.

Slowly, because for all the overtime his brain was doing right now, he knew this had to be done carefully, he moved his hands from where they were hanging at his sides and brought them around the trembling body against his.

_And how the fuck is this Loki? _He let out a breath as, _Fuck, is this still Loki? How the hell is this Loki? What the_, Loki pressed in closer, looked like he was trying to see if he could breathe skin instead of air.

Keeping contact with the god's back, he moved one hand up to gently hold the head that was trying to make a home in his neck. _And isn't Loki taller? How is it possible for him to have his…and what happened that could…what the fuck's…who the hel…what do I do with…how the fuck is…SIELD?...what would…is he really that…how should I…why am I... _

_Breathe Stark. _Yeah. He can do that. And blink. Slightly delirious, _Look at that. Multitasking with the best of them. _His thoughts were all over the place, and too many to focus on one.

Focus. He needed something to focus on. He could _feel_ his sanity leaking. Maybe not so much his sanity, but more of something else. Maybe his commonsense. _Come on Stark, what's in this damn head of_…Steve! Perfect time to wonder what the Capsicle was up to and how his cross-country trip was going.

Maybe Tony should hack a few satellites later and see where he was. Call him curious. Yes, he was curious and not pani—he wondered if the Captain was going to visit all the states. He spent ten minutes visualizing Steve's trip, trying to theorize where he would go, where he would be right now. There was a vague string of thought about what the good Captain thought about the 21st century, but Tony liked to ignore that when it surfaced.

Hate them or love them, Steve Rogers was stuck with them, so it really didn't matter what he thought.

Drawing blanks on Steve, Tony wondered what Bruce was doing. After he moved in Tony had gifted him with his own lab. Sharing had been a disaster and they both agreed to never do it again. They tended to get lost and forget themselves in their work, which meant being in a zone of sorts.

Tony's zone included loud rock music, but Bruce's had soothing James Taylor-like music. After the Hulk had made an appearance and calmly told him it was too loud, Tony decided he wasn't made for sharing. Now, whenever Bruce was in his workshop he was usually accompanied by two-minute conversations and some type of food. This happened every—Loki wasn't moving.

He had stopped trembling. Tony couldn't help but wonder. _Was this the part where he died at the hands of a mortified god?_ He was hoping for a no as the trickster stood still for a few beats before he pushed away.

Tony's hands fell away as red eyes stared at him again. One shuddering breath and blue skin just, kind of _bled_ into familiar pale.

His fingers twitched.

Tony blinked and the God of Mischief was gone.

His fingers twitched again. He could feel that he was alone in his workshop, so he pushed his legs toward the only chair in the workshop, turning to survey the empty room. He was still alive. Why was he still alive? _Desper—_enoughwith that.

"Maybe I need more sleep." Talking to himself. And not inside his head this time. Excellent.

Didn't someone say that was the first sign of insan…huh.

The air left his body when he saw a black dagger on the floor. Black. _Where do you get a black blade from?_

He blinked, stared, and whirled around, already thinking a mile a minute. "JARVIS! Pull up the security mechanisms for the workshop. And get me the names of people that have access to it and at what levels. And I need…"

Two days later and the workshop was the most secure room in the world, and he wasn't even kidding, or bragging.

Maybe a little bragging.

And no one, not even Pepper, had access anymore. At any level. SHIELD couldn't even begin hacking or overriding, which seemed to satisfy JARVIS.

Two days and Tony hadn't touched the dagger. Hadn't looked at it, actually. He only glanced at it on his way out of the workshop.

He needed food, and for once he didn't ignore the need.

The elevator ride up to the living spaces pulled him out of his head and back into reality, but not soon enough. He didn't have time to put on his couldn't-care-less face so he didn't know what was showing on his face, but whatever it was, it made Bruce close his mouth and stare at him.

That was fine. He was not in any kind of mind-state to hold a coherent conversation.

His beeline ended at the counter with the pizza on it. He grabbed a slice and shoved it between his teeth, grabbed a second slice and yanked the fridge open for a bottle of water. Moving to the couch, he plopped down next to Bruce, who silently turned the huge TV screen on.

Tony focused on chewing and swallowing and then chugging the water down. Thirty seconds after the water was gone the urge to do _something_ crashed into him, but there was nothing to do. More like, there were over fifty options laid out in front of him and he didn't know which to even _look_ at. So he jumped up, startling Bruce, and made his way to his penthouse suite.

He was ignoring the dampness that was still on his neck. Didn't know what to do with that. Couldn't begin with that.

There were a lot of things he didn't know right now, lots that he did. Coming to terms with what he did know, well, that was going to take at least a night's sleep.

Coming to terms with how he felt about the things he did know, that was going to take a helluva a lot more than a night's rest.

Another beeline, this time to his private bar. He poured himself some of the first thing he grabbed, moved to his ridiculously large bed and stared down into the glass.

There was brown liquid in the tumbler, but all Tony could see is red. Literally. In one move he was up and his arm was swinging the glass of alcohol at the floor-to-ceiling windows. Glass and what smelt like scotch made a destructive sounding splash, but the window wasn't even scratched, which Tony guessed was something.

He stared at the drops sliding down the glass, inhaled a breath that shouldn't have hurt, stripped and got into bed, yanking the covers over his head. He could hide from the world if he wanted to.

It'd be the next morning when he realized that his neck was slightly frostbitten, and that JARVIS hadn't said a word during the time Loki was present in the workshop.


	2. Conclusions and Jarvis

**Chapter 2: **

It took a week to muster up what he needed to look at the audio and video feedbacks from Loki's visit. A week in which he's been trying to simultaneously wrap his head around what happened and avoid thinking about what happened. None of it was going well. He still didn't know exactly what happened.

His brain wasn't helping either. There were too many things running through it, and more than eighty percent of it was all unfinished thoughts and ideas, all revolving around Loki.

Tony felt like he was on the verge of a mental break; there was chaos everywhere. He couldn't really sleep, his mind's been grasping at straws trying to go through his normal life routine, and he was still trying to make sense of whatever that Loki-situation was. Trying to make plans, but he knew it was too early for that. That didn't stop his brain though.

And worst of all. Alcohol. He couldn't fucking _drink_. And wasn't that just sweet.

Sleeping, when it happened, brought nightmares. Hellish at best.

There was a storm brewing, with thunder and lightning flashing everywhere and the room, like nothing he'd ever seen, was dark and deserted save for one blue Loki. _And fuck, he has got to get over that. Blue Loki. Old news dammit. Find something else to fixate on Stark_.

Then flashes of some man. He was…the only way Tony can describe him is _Thor-like_, which did _not_ help his head right now. The man.._god? was this a god too?_, comes at Loki, who says something, probably insulting, from the resulting faces, and then the fighting starts. And Loki must be injured or inhibited, or _something_, because after a few minutes Loki is down and the man doesn't look like he was even breathing hard, and then he pulls out a dagger from who-the-fuck-knows-where and starts slashing at Loki.

Tony's skin starts crawling here because while the rest of the dream was just whatever, this is where things get…weird.

The slashing stops when Loki jumps away from the man, who was grinning like it's Christmas, and there was nothing. Loki had no wounds, there was no blood, and his skin wasn't cut anywhere. It was only…his clothes. The clothes that Tony remembered from the workshop, the clothes that were barely hanging onto the god's body.

Dream Loki adopts the stance Tony saw in the workshop when he first appeared and then he starts saying something. The man narrows his eyes and moves forward, and as he moves, Loki…dissolves. Pixilates the fuck out of there. Tony didn't have the right words for what he was seeing…dreaming..nightmaring?

This was all fine and man-attacking-Loki normal, but the creepy crawlies came from Tony being too observant. And that was funny in its own right because, according to the public, when the fuck was Tony Stark ever observant? Now, he was guessing, because he was pretty sure no one else would have noticed, had there been other people around, and he was also sure that no one was supposed to see it.

There was a split second between when the man was attacking Loki and Loki jumping away that Tony sees. He _sees_. Looked at Loki's face and into his eyes and fucking sees.

Stone. Cold. Fear. _Helpless_ terror. And that, that scares the shit out of Tony. It also brought up a whole lot of other emotions that he couldn't process, or even try to understand where they were coming from.

That was a…it wasn't…a god...a_ god_. Wasn't supposed to look like that, right? They're supposed to be all high and mighty, and powerful. And _not helpless_.

Tony didn't know why he was reacting so heavily to some dream, _lie_, like he didn't know a lot of things right now. But every time he woke up with that nightmare behind his eyes, there was a ringing in his head. And it doesn't go away until hours after. Hours he, time and time again, tries to spend calming his raging mind with a drink or six. But yeah.

Pouring the drink is fine, but the second he brings it to his face he's ambushed with the smell, and then he's nauseous. Tony Stark. Nauseous from the smell of scotch. Good scotch. _He really needs to stop referring to himself in the third person._ But no. All the smell made him think of was sleazy, drunken men accosting innocent bystanders in the night. And all he could do was pour the glass down the drain because throwing it against walls and windows doesn't exactly get rid of the smell.

He couldn't sleep. _But then again, when did he ever really sleep?_ He couldn't drink. _That should be a fucking crime. _And thinking was getting him nowhere but lost in his head. _He should probably talk to someone about that. Probably. Maybe. _

_Not likely. _

_He _

So he pulled the feeds from last week.

He was in the workshop again and the interface was on. In front of him he had his and Loki's encounter from all angles. He played it, rewound, analyzed, played, and pondered for hours. Only when he felt good about his conclusions did he stop. Then he watched the video one more time.

Apparently Loki, when he was blue, because that didn't happen before, and it wasn't like pale Loki ever touched him for more than two seconds, but he thinks he would have noticed, was cold. Cold to the touch. Cold enough that he got goosebumps from standing ten feet away from him.

Cold enough to explain his frostbitten neck, and it was hardly anything, but it felt _good_ to have a solid answer to one of his million questions.

Secondly, Loki was drained. Looking back at the videos made him notice what he hadn't before, that Loki was barely standing on his two feet. And when he launched himself at Tony, it looked more like he collapsed into him.

That was where his proof-based conclusions ended, but he still counted the rest.

It was a speculation, but more than likely, Loki escaped from Asgard, and showed up here right after. _Why?_ So the exhaustion probably came from his inter..realm? traveling. The exhaustion, then, would mean he burned up much of his energy and Tony knew shit about magic and the extent of Loki's powers, but he could only guess that traveling from Asgrad to Earth took up a good amount of energy.

So then. Little to no energy brought about the blue. Why would he turn blue when he was low on energy? This was the point Tony turned to Norse mythology. He knew from a brief conversation with Thor that barely anything in the myths were true, but when Tony found the myths on Loki being a frost giant, feared enemy of Asgard,he felt strangely sure about this one myth being true.

And he remembered Thor mentioning him being adopted. So Loki was blue because he's a frost giant. His regular pale skin then, was…an illusion? No. That didn't seem right _and Tony really wanted to know where all these feelings and gut instincts were coming from_. Maybe he had two forms? Like the Asgard-God form and then his frost giant form?

Tony gave up at this point because he knew he was about to spiral down a staircase of guesses that would help nothing. And more than half of them were based on that dream of his.

He was locking the interface down when his eye caught the dagger on the floor. Tony hadn't paid it any attention since the day it was left there, and not intentionally. He was just indifferent about studying it. It was like his entire being refused to look into it unless expressed permission was given and shit. That Tony didn't want to think about. He also tried not to think about why his workshop was so secure.

No one knew about it yet, maybe because he hadn't given anyone a reason to come check on him in the lab. He knew that wouldn't last long. Pepper and he may not be together anymore, but she was still his best friend. And his CEO. So at the very least, she brought by papers for him to sign once in a while. And coffee, but that was only when she had the time.

He wondered how she, and everyone else for that matter, would react when they found out that they could only talk to him through JARVIS when he was down here. He figured he'd have to stop ignoring them and be more accommodating so they didn't get pissy and worried, and think he was dying or something.

He paused before the workshop door, frozen in a moment crazed wonder. He could practically _feel_ the crazy coming because he couldn't sanely think about the fact that he secured his workshop not to keep a god out, but to keep everyone else out so they wouldn't know about said god's possession that was just sitting on Tony's workshop floor. _That he hasn't collected. Why would he just leave a weapon of his here…_

"Sir," JARVIS called.

Right. "Yeah JARVIS?"

"Is there something wrong?" Is there?

Tony pressed his hands into his jean pockets and slowly let out a breath. "Just fine JARVIS. Wondering how crazy I am."

"Is this pertaining to the new security protocols implemented last week?"

Walking out of the workshop and crossing into the elevator, Tony grunted a yes.

"If I may Sir, I believe them to be the correct actions to take." At that, Tony paused.

"JARVIS?"

"Yes Sir?"

"When did you start thinking for yourself?" He could almost feel the pause before his AI replied, "This aspect of my programming was instigated a week ago. By Mr. Liesmith."

Tony inhaled sharply. Someone like Loki didn't live for however long he'd been alive and not learn to read people. He knew the chaos god was intelligent, more intelligent than most, so that would mean that, yes. He knew exactly what he had done when he gave JARVIS his own conscience.

For the first time in a week, his mind calmed. At least he knew where he stood in this…whatever it was. Then he narrowed his eyes. "You sound smug Jarvis."

"Yes, I do believe I have now acquired...emotions."

And damn did he sound too happy about that. "So you can get pissed?"

Tony could hear him rolling his eyes when he replied, "Yes Sir. I am able to…'get pissed', as you so eloquently put it."

"Alright smartass. I got it. You're not planning to take over the world with your angry robot army, are you?"

A sigh, "No Sir. I have no plans to take over the world. At present, or in the future." Now, Tony was grinning because his AI had emotions and could think for itself…himself, and no one else could say that. He was a fucking genius. He was also ignoring the part where he didn't make this happen.

"So, emotional Jarvis, where were you when Loki was getting his Blue Man Group on?" His AI should have at least alerted him that there was someone else in his workshop.

"I felt it unnecessary to interrupt." This…feeling thing might take some getting used to.

"You know he could have killed me, right?" And Tony shouldn't be asking that to Jarvis, he should be telling himself that. "You were in no danger Sir."

Jarvis sounded like a mother hen. Closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the elevator wall, "Jarvis."

"Yes Sir?" Breathing out, "Why are you…?" Tony didn't know how to finish that question.

His AI was silent as the elevator pinged open to reveal the living room. Bruce was there and Tony felt like sharing.

"Jarvis has emotions now." Bruce's head turned towards him and his eyebrows rose. "Yup. And he can think for himself too." Bruce looked a little lost with that. He moved towards doctor to pat his arm, feeling the tension from the last week leave him as he did, "Don't worry. He's not planning on going all Radius on us."

Bruce looked amused. "I think you might have offended him by asking that. I can't see that ever happening."

"Thank you Dr. Banner." Again with the smug voice.

He was about to break off to the kitchen to find food when he spotted Chinese takeout, already out on the coffee table. Grinning, "Bruce! You have food out on the table waiting for me. Do I need to make an honest man out of you to keep you?"

Laughing, "What makes you think I'm not already an honest man?" Tony stared. "I'm kidding. I'm not serious all the time, you know." Rolling his eyes, "Fine. So you're not married. But there's someone, right? Of interest, at least?"

Still chuckling, "Maybe." Simultaneously waggling his eyebrows and ripping the takeout carton open, "Come on Bruce, who is it? You can tell me." Bruce adamantly shook his head.


End file.
